


Under my Skin

by HiddenTreasures



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, First Meetings, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-26 04:44:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12051582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiddenTreasures/pseuds/HiddenTreasures
Summary: John had been traveling the world for years, looking for his soulmate, the person who bore the other half of his soulmark tattoo. He eventually gives up and plans to have his soulmark covered, when it finally completes itself.





	Under my Skin

John had been anxiously waiting for his soulmark to appear all day. It was his eighteenth birthday, the day a person received half of a tattoo that would never be complete until the found the person—or persons—that bore the other half.

While he knew the soulmark wouldn’t appear until his actual birth minute, he kept glancing at his arms and legs, hoping to see a flash of ink. But it wasn’t until 11:49 that night that the skin above his heart seared white-hot, and John knew his soulmark had appeared.

He eagerly stripped off his shirt as he ran to the bathroom, ready to inspect his soulmark. But he was confused and disappointed when his soulmark was an odd, amorphous blob on his chest. It was in the shape of a triangle, if a three-year-old had attempted the triangle. The corners were rounded, and each of the sides were slightly concave. If John squinted, it  kind of sort of had the outline of one of those fidget-spinner things that exploded into popularity recently.

Inside of the awkward triangle-esque shape was what appeared to be a detailed tattoo of a rose. The petals spiraled outward with beautiful detail and precision, and despite it being inside of that shape John didn’t quite have a name for, he thought it was a rather lovely tattoo. Now, to find the person with the rest of it.

_Maybe then it’ll make more sense as it what it’s supposed to be,_  John mused to himself.

And so John began looking for his soulmate. Knowing that it was incredibly rare for soulmates to be living in the same country, John immediately packed a bag and wandered to the airport, and he boarded a flight at random.

His first stop was Germany, and he spent a few weeks there, traveling and sightseeing, but mostly looking for the person who would cause his skin to pinch and burn, indicating his tattoo would be as complete as his life would become.

Germany was a bust, though, and after three weeks of touring the country, John hopped on another plane.

Again and again, John wandered the globe, looking for his other half. He called home to his friends to check in every couple of weeks, but with no parents and no job, there was very little that tied him to that damp little island he’d called home for the first eighteen years of his life.

He found odd jobs to help pay his way through his nomadic lifestyle, because he didn’t want to burn through his inheritance money too fast. How humiliating would it be to find his soulmate, but be utterly penniless and homeless?

He eventually made his way through the entire European continent, but he was still alone, and still only had that weird mass of a triangle on his chest, and nothing more.

But that was okay. He didn’t expect it to be easy, or quick. Nothing in life was easy or quick, and he didn’t mind expending his time and effort to find the person who would be his other half.

He celebrated his nineteenth birthday in Japan, watching the cherry blossoms bloom and staying with a family who cooked him the biggest birthday dinner he’d ever had.

His twentieth birthday was spent in Africa, where he spent the day by himself, hiking and exploring.

He was in the Americas for his twenty-first birthday, and he spent it at an American bar, where he was finally old enough to buy himself a drink in the country.

Three years. Three long years he’d been looking, and yet he was still no closer to finding his soulmate than he’d been when he’d left London the day after his eighteenth birthday. Maybe it was time to give up. He’d visited every single continent, and almost all of the countries within each continent, and yet he was still alone with that stupid rose within a blob on his chest.

After spending another three months in North America, John finally decided it was time. He’d already had to tap into his savings account, which he had been trying to avoid as much as possible. And his cousin had just phoned to tell him she was getting married, and that she would traipse across the pond to drag him to her wedding, so he might as well come on his own volition.

“All right, all right,” he’d conceded, “I’ll be there, Donna.”

“You’d better,” she snarked. She was quiet for a few moments, then said, “Still no luck?”

The softness of her voice made a lump well in his throat, and he swallowed it down.

“Nah,” he said, infusing cheer into his tone. “But I still haven’t visited all of the countries in the world yet! Still got plenty to see. They’ve got to be somewhere there!”

He had ended the call soon after, not wanting to hear any more of the pity in her voice. Donna had happened upon her soulmate at an airport by sheer luck. She was leaving for Egypt and he was off to visit family in Italy. They’d decided to get a coffee before their flight left and they’d got to talking, and when they shook hands before departing, they’d each dropped their drinks when they felt their arms burn with the completion of their tattoo.

When Donna had called him a few months ago to tell him her good news, John had tried to be happy for her, but he knew his enthusiasm had fallen flat. It wasn’t fair. All he wanted was to find his soulmate, his best friend, and to spend the rest of his life with them. Was that too much to ask for?

Apparently it was, and John’s spirits were as low as ever as he got on a plane bound for London.

The wedding was beautiful. Donna was as radiant as he had ever seen her, and John really was happy for his cousin.

After the wedding, John decided to stop traveling. What was the point, anyway? He could travel for the rest of his life, and there was still no guarantee that he would find his soulmate. He was just fated to die alone, and be one of the poor, unlucky sods that went their whole life without ever knowing their soulmate.

That prospect depressed him, and to take his mind off of his eternal loneliness, he enrolled himself in uni, taking classes in physics and astronomy as he did his best to ignore his incomplete soulmark. He didn’t need a soulmate, he told himself. He could find happiness and completion in other parts of his life.

The years continued to fly by. John finished uni at the top of his class, and he went on to further his education by working towards a doctorate degree in astrophysics. He had friends, and had even dabbled in dating, but nothing ever lasted longer than a few months. There was never a spark, it seemed, no matter how much John willed there to be one. But he knew that spark would only come if he met his soulmate, but by now, John was sure his soulmate didn’t exist.

He hated soulmates. He hated the entire institution of it. Why would he be given a sign that his other half is out there somewhere, but not be given any help in finding them?

He grew to resent the ink on his chest. He hated that his soulmark looked like nothing, and he hated the sight of roses, and he hated that he had wasted so much of his time and money looking for someone who he would probably never meet.

A few weeks before his twenty-eighth birthday, John decided he’d had enough. He was sick of seeing his incomplete soulmark every day, and he was sick of the reminder that he had failed in finding the one person that was meant for him. He never wanted to see that shape or that rose again.

Steeling himself for what he was about to do, John took in a deep breath and stepped into the tattoo shop across the street from his flat.

A little bell dinged above the door, and the shop’s only occupant—a blonde woman—looked up. She was younger than he expected. She barely looked old enough to be out of school. But she was extremely pretty, and just John’s type, and he found himself walking closer.

“Hi,” she said brightly. “I’ll be with you in just a mo’. Just finishing up. You here for a tattoo?”

“To get one covered, actually,” John said, wandering around the little shop. The walls were covered with drawings of tattoos, and he suspected that was what the woman was working on.

“Oh?” she asked.

“Yeah, I have a tattoo on my chest,” he said. “And I want to cover it up with something.”

“Can I see it?” she asked, setting her pen aside. “So I know what I’m working with.”

John nodded and unbuttoned his shirt to reveal his soulmark. The woman sucked in a sharp breath, and went pale enough that John feared she might pass out.

“Why-why do you want to cover it?” she asked faintly. “Isn’t that your soulmark?”

“So what?” John snapped defensively. He had already had to endure his friends’ disapproval when he told them of his plan to cover up his soulmark. He didn’t want to hear it from this stranger, too. “It’s stupid anyway. It’s not even a real tattoo of anything.”

“Because it’s incomplete,” she argued.

“As it has been for the last ten years,” John said coldly, beginning to get angry with this girl. “Besides, the whole idea of soulmates is just mad. I don’t need someone to complete me. I’m perfectly fine on my own! And if you’re going to be such a cow about covering it, I’ll go somewhere else!”

“No, don’t!” the woman begged, and she staggered up from her chair.

She stumbled over her feet, and John immediately reached out to steady her. As soon as his hands touched her bare forearms, a burning, aching pain stabbed at his chest, making his fingers dig into his woman’s arms. She whimpered, and she reached up and pressed her fingers to her chest, rubbing at the skin below the fabric.

John’s head felt dizzy as the pain receded as abruptly as it came.

He was still grasping the tattoo shop worker’s arms tight enough that his knuckles were white, and he let go immediately. Her skin was red in the shapes of his fingers, but he was too busy looking down at his bare chest to verify what had just happened.

_Please, please, please,_  he begged, and he felt weak with relief when he saw his tattoo had changed. Above the triangular blob that had been there were four neat little ovals, each with a comma-shaped spike at the tip. Inside those ovals were more perfect little roses.

“Oh!” the woman gasped, and she unbuttoned her own blouse to expose her chest.

Just above her left bra cup was the same shape, but looking at it properly instead of upside down, John realized it was the shape of a paw print. A wolf’s paw print.

“You… you’re my… we’re…”

“Do you still think your soulmark is stupid?” she asked, her voice quivering with nervousness.

John shook his head desperately, willing her to believe him.

“No,” he whispered. “No, it’s the most beautiful soulmark I’ve ever seen. And it’s on the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. Oh, God. I’ve found you! I’ve really found you!”

John swept up and wrapped his arms around the woman whose name he still didn’t know, and he crushed her tightly in an embrace. All of the anger and frustration and heartache he’d felt over the years seemed to melt away as he held his soulmate in his arms.

“You were so rude to me,” she murmured, even as she held him just as tightly.

“I know,” he said, hating himself and wanting to go back in time and punch his past self in the mouth. “I know, and I’m so sorry. I’ve just been so angry and disappointed, but that’s no excuse for me to talk to you—to anyone—like that. Please forgive me, love. I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you, if you’ll let me. Please.”

The woman sniffled and giggled into his shoulder.

“My name’s not ‘love’,” she teased, pulling back to look at him.

Her eyes were red and watery, but she had the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen. They were a gorgeous hazel and had little flecks of gold in them, and they seemed to shine from within as she smiled at him.

“Well,” he drawled, “seeing as I don’t know your real name, I had to use the next best thing.”

“Rose Tyler,” she said. “My name’s Rose Tyler.”

“Rose Tyler,” he repeated, letting the name flow through him and warm him from the inside. “Rose.”

He chuckled then brushed his fingertips across her soulmark, and around the rose within the paw print.

“I should’ve known,” he said.

“Well, assuming your name isn’t Pawprint,” she said with a tongue-touched grin, “there’s no rule that your soulmark has anything in common with you or your soulmate.”

“Are you saying Pawprint isn’t a good name?” John pouted. “I think it’s a fine name. Had it my whole life. Was planning on passing it down to my children one day.”

Rose snorted. “Not to my children, mate.”

John giggled giddily, and said, “No? Shame. I guess we’ll just have to give them the name John, then.”

“John,” she repeated softly. “As lovely as Pawprint is, I think I like John better.”

“Me too,” he said happily.

They both slipped into silence for a few moments, still basking in the joy and surprise of having found each other. John was absently tracing Rose’s soulmark, and as he ran his fingertips across the toes of the paw print, he asked, “You knew straightaway that I was your soulmate, didn’t you?”

Rose nodded. “I’ve had those toes on my chest for a couple years now. When I saw the pad of the foot on your chest, and the rose inside it, I knew.”

“I never knew what my soulmark was,” John admitted. “I thought it was just some silly shape. Or that maybe my soulmark was broken or something. That’s what I told myself when I hadn’t been able to find you.”

“You said ten years,” Rose whispered, sounding heartbroken. “I’m sorry you’ve had to wait that long when I only had to wait for three years.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” John said firmly. “We’ve found each other, and that’s the important part.”

Rose nodded, and she reached up to wrap her arms around his neck again. John shivered when her bare torso met his. Her skin was soft and warm, and it seemed to make his skin tingle where it pressed together with hers.

“I’m sorry for how I treated you earlier,” he whispered. “I really, really am.”

“I forgive you,” she said in his ear. “On one condition.”

John pulled back to look her in the eye.

“Anything,” he said earnestly.

A mischievous twinkle sparkled in her eyes and she smiled at him again with that tongue-touched grin as she said, “You buy me chips.”

John blinked.

“Chips?” he repeated, sure he heard her wrong.

“Yep,” she said. “Chips.”

A slow smile spread across John’s face, and he leaned forward to press his lips to her forehead.

“All right then, Rose Tyler,” he said. “One great big basket of apology chips, coming up.”

He quickly buttoned up his shirt and watched her do the same before he reached out and wiggled his fingers. She threaded her fingers through his, and stepped close to him so she could hug his arm to her chest as he led her out of the tattoo shop and into the busy London street beyond.


End file.
